The 76ers announced last week their decision to make StubHub, the ticket marketplace website, their Official Ticketing Partner. According to the team press release, the 76ers will sell all of their tickets exclusively through StubHub as part of a brand new ticketing platform. While StubHub has always been thought of as a secondary market for ticketing where fans who already own tickets can sell to other fans, the partnership with the 76ers will allow StubHub to become a primary market point of sale.
Sixers & @Stubhub Launch Revolutionary New Ticketing Platform » https://t.co/qqWbyql4JM pic.twitter.com/BDlqQu4hnM
— Philadelphia 76ers (@Sixers) February 8, 2016
President of StubHub, Scott Cutler, believes that the company is ready to make the leap into being a primary market seller. Cutler said that, “For over 15 years, StubHub has been a market place that connected buyers and sellers of tickets to live events on the secondary market, but now we are in a position to provide the industry a true end-to-end ticketing solution that combines our experience in e-commerce an secondary ticketing with a set of features that will help our partners sell more tickets. Cutler also said, “This new platform signifies the evolution of our company and a revolution in the industry. We could not be more excited that the Philadelphia 76ers are joining us as our inaugural partner.”
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The new ticket selling platform, which is going to launch for the 2016-2017 NBA season and will continue to be marketed to other teams, will offer team partners new capabilities highlighted with an enhanced consumer experience to improve ticket sale conversion. Some of the advancements include having one combined marketplace of primary and secondary tickets available in a single arena seat map.
Other helpful features in the platform include an area that will recommend the best-fit search criteria tickets for people browsing the site as well as real-time market data to help the box office manage ticket pricing more dynamically. One final helpful feature is the integration to a mobile site that makes ticket buying on a mobile device easier for users trying to search for availability at each game.
The efforts of the Philadelphia 76ers to improve slumping ticket sales is likely the source of the decision to optimize the current ticket selling platform by partnering with StubHub. The 76ers have been one of the worst teams in the NBA the last few years, and as a result, the Sixers are focusing on building the team’s season ticket holder base.
Scott O’Neil, Philadelphia 76ers CEO, said that his organization is “Excited to launch a ground breaking ticket marketplace with StubHub that for the first time, seamlessly integrates and makes available primary and secondary seats in one market place, on one seating map, with one blended pricing purchase process.”
It will be interesting to see what other NBA franchises (slumping on the court or not) will follow the 76ers into partnering with StubHub. Given the large popularity of StubHub with sports fans, it seems that the merging of primary and secondary ticket markets will help both fans and the teams by reducing confusion of ticket prices. Hopefully, the Sixers will realize a boost in ticket sales with the StubHub upgrade, because the on-court product isn’t likely to help in selling tickets this season.